The exhibition is designed through a long voyage: from Southern Africa to Brazil, from Angola’s post‐independence to the author’s interior exile, from the desert to the sea, from his obsessions to his hesitations, from family commitments to a demanding loneliness, from the long war to the analysis of its implications, from his detailed field diaries to the game of mirrors between observer and observed.

Carvalho urges to engage with and to give voice to narratives silenced or ignored by dominant ones, which also don’t allow them to have a place in mainstream historiography. Thus he makes the call to listen to the other, to other worldviews, to emerging voices. In his view, it is time to attend to all sorts of voices that the world still holds, some of which are at risk of disappearance – in everybody´s interest of human diversity.

Vast Namibe is a beautiful book of photographs by Jorge Ferreira “on landscapes, people, animals and plants in the province of Namibe” with text and captions by Cristina U. Rodrigues and graphic design of João Ribeiro Soares.

Ruy Duarte de Carvalho, who recently left this world, lived a life associated to traveling, which incidentally is one of the favorite themes of his books - a production that goes beyond a dozen, including poetry, fiction and essay. With the course of agricultural regent, which he concluded in 1960, went through big part of the Angolan territory working on coffee plantations and also in traditional agro-pastoral production, taking care of sheep in Caranculo, in the (then) province of Moçâmedes, now Namibe.

And I believe, having arrived at this point in life, that I can’t stop wanting to understand that the world, all over and not just here, conspires and produces utilizing always, or almost always, the use and abuse of others’ good faith. I’m afraid I will never be able, even oldish, to resign to this and become the subject well done, dissimulated, pirate, adaptable and finally adapted, that never, throughout my entire life, have I managed to be.

It's not up to the neo-animists to invent anything or to feel forced to do so. On the contrary it is to insist on the evocation of all knowledges and on the review of all data, documents and materials available. They might reveal other answers, having both time and situation changed, that go beyond those found by former researchers or even by those who collected them or put them in order.

To western architects such as me, who have been developing their work as project designers or researchers in Angola, the issue that strikes us the most is the apparent conflict opposing Luanda to the rest of the Angolan territory.